Diabetes Awareness Quotes

To change our eating habits, we must learn to eat mindfully, being more aware of chewing and tasting what we eat so that the brain can register the incoming nutrients.

I have been aware for many years that most people do not think about aging in the same way that they think about cancer, or diabetes, or heart disease. They are strongly in favor of the absolute elimination of such diseases as soon as possible, but the idea of eliminating aging—maintaining truly youthful physical and mental function indefinitely—evokes an avalanche of fears and reservations. Yet, in the sense that matters most, aging is just like smoking: It’s really bad for you.

Every action flick depicts the destruction of civilization as some kind of crash-boom-bang, a nuclear war or hurtling comet or a self-aware-cyborg uprising, but the true cataclysm may already be creeping up right under our eyes: because of rampant obesity, one in three children born in the United States is at risk of diabetes—meaning, we could be the first generation of Americans to outlive our own children. Maybe the ancient Hindus were better crystal-ball-gazers than Hollywood when they predicted the world would end not with a bang but with a big old yawn. Shiva the Destroyer would snuff us out by doing … nothing. Lazing out. Withdrawing his hot-blooded force from our bodies. Letting us become slugs. Coach

She hadn’t always been obsessed with babies. There was a time she believed she would change the world, lead a movement, follow Dolores Huerta and Sylvia Mendez, Ellen Ochoa and Sonia Sotomayor. Where her bisabuela had picked pecans and oranges in the orchards, climbing the tallest trees with her small girlbody, dropping the fruit to the baskets below where her tías and tíos and primos stooped to pick those that had fallen on the ground, where her abuela had sewn in the garment district in downtown Los Angeles with her bisabuela, both women taking the bus each morning and evening, making the beautiful dresses to be sold in Beverly Hills and maybe worn by a movie star, and where her mother had cared for the ill, had gone to their crumbling homes, those diabetic elderly dying in the heat in the Valley—Bianca would grow and tend to the broken world, would find where it ached and heal it, would locate its source of ugliness and make it beautiful. Only, since she’d met Gabe and become La Llorona, she’d been growing the ugliness inside her. She could sense it warping the roots from within. The cactus flower had dropped from her when she should have been having a quinceañera, blooming across the dance floor in a bright, sequined dress, not spending the night at her boyfriend’s nana’s across town so that her mama wouldn’t know what she’d done, not taking a Tylenol for the cramping and eating the caldo de rez they’d made for her. They’d taken such good care of her. Had they done it for her? Or for their son’s chance at a football scholarship? She’d never know. What she did know: She was blessed with a safe procedure. She was blessed with women to check her for bleeding. She was blessed with choice. Only, she hadn’t chosen for herself. She hadn’t. Awareness must come. And it did. Too late. If she’d chosen for herself, she would have chosen the cactus spines. She would’ve chosen the one night a year the night-blooming cereus uncoils its moon-white skirt, opens its opalescent throat, and allows the bats who’ve flown hundreds of miles with their young clutching to their fur as they swim through the air, half-starved from waiting, to drink their fill and feed their next generation of creatures who can see through the dark. She’d have been a Queen of the Night and taught her daughter to give her body to no Gabe. She knew that, deep inside. Where Anzaldúa and Castillo dwelled, where she fed on the nectar of their toughest blossoms. These truths would moonstone in her palm and she would grasp her hand shut, hold it tight to her heart, and try to carry it with her toward the front door, out onto the walkway, into the world. Until Gabe would bend her over. And call her gordita or cochina. Chubby girl. Dirty girl. She’d open her palm, and the stone had turned to dust. She swept it away on her jeans. A daughter doesn’t solve anything; she needed her mama to tell her this. But she makes the world a lot less lonely. A lot less ugly.  

KF: Why is type 2 diabetes suddenly so prevalent? NB: Diets are changing, not just in the U.S., but worldwide. Diabetes seems to follow the spread of meaty, high-fat, high-calorie diets. In Japan, for example, the traditional rice-based diet kept the population generally healthy and thin for many centuries. Up until 1980, only 1 to 5 percent of Japanese adults over age forty had diabetes. Starting around that time, however, the rapid westernization of the diet meant that meat, milk, cheese, and sodas became fashionable. Waistlines expanded, and, by 1990, diabetes prevalence in Japan had climbed to 11 to 12 percent. The same sort of trend has occurred in the U.S. Over the last century, per capita meat consumption increased from about 125 pounds per year (which was already very high compared with other countries) in the early 1900s to over 200 pounds today. In other words, the average American now eats 75 pounds more meat every year than the average American of a century ago. In the same interval, cheese intake soared from less than 4 pounds per person per year to about 33 pounds today. Sugar intake has gone up, too, by about 30 pounds per person per year. Where are we putting all that extra meat, cheese, and sugar? It contributes to body fat, of course, and diabetes follows. Today, about 13 percent of the U.S. adult population has type 2 diabetes, although many of them are not yet aware they have it.

Optimizing efficiency is not always a priority. One glaring example is that classic holiday event: the canned food drive. Such events help people feel involved, especially children. They raise awareness about hunger. But these are their only benefits. They are a terrible way to feed the hungry. Cans are heavy and hard to ship. Some canned, boxed and jarred food is healthy, but much is not. According to Feeding America, 58 percent of families who use food pantries nationwide have someone with hypertension, and more than 30 percent have someone with diabetes. Beefaroni, Kraft mac and cheese, and Vienna sausages are not part of the solution.

About the Author : Type-1 diabetic, diabetes educator, author, Lee walks in your shoes every day. He writes from both clinical and personal experience with honesty, compassion, and humor. He works full time running the diabetes program for a rural nonprofit clinic in one of the poorest counties in the United States, and is a tireless advocate for diabetes care and awareness.

At the Harvard Symposium for Hard Problems in Social Science , Emily Oster presented a very simple, elementary problem: almost all people with type-2 diabetes who are overweight can be cured by losing a little bit of weight. They are made aware of it, yet they usually gain weight a�er diagnosis (she mentioned "Atkins" among the options, so it was not just AMA low-fat.). It is so obvious that we know what to do yet do not carry the action because thinking can be largely ornamental. The proof of the sterility of (a significant class of) knowledgesterility of (a significant class of) knowledge was right there (among the obvious evidence that the population has been gaining weight in spire of technological and educational progress). Yet the others social scientists kept exalting the value of "education" in spite of this simple devastating evidence. Someone even suggested teaching more "critical thinking". This is the great sucker problem: people who teach truly think that teaching, or, worse, preaching, cures.

Here are a few things yoga nidra can do: Activate the relaxation response and deactivate the stress response (which improves functioning of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and the endocrine system). Increase immunity and the ability to fight germs and infections (Kumar 2013a, 82–94) Improve heart functioning by lowering blood pressure and cholesterol (Pandya and Kumar 2007) Decrease pain Improve control of fluctuating blood glucose and symptoms associated with diabetes (Amita et al. 2009) Significantly improve anxiety, depression, and well-being in patients with menstrual irregularities and in those having psychological problems (Rani et al. 2011) Manage pre- and postsurgical conditions (Kumar 2013a, 56) Reduce insomnia and improve sleep: while not intended as a substitute for sleep, one hour of effective yoga nidra practice is equivalent to about four hours of sleep (Kumar 2013a) Increase energy, especially when needed most Reduce worry and enhance clear thinking and problem solving Improve and refresh your outlook Replace mood swings and emotional upsets with greater emotional understanding and stability Develop intuition and increase creativity Improve meditation and enhance its benefits Integrate, heal, and revitalize your body, mind, and spirit Enhance your Self-awareness and ability to experience witness consciousness (defined later in this chapter) Transform thoughts and feelings of separation into a direct experience of wholeness Finally, one of yoga nidra’s prime benefits is that it brings yoga’s essential teachings to life that have been handed down to us over the ages from the Upanishads, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Bhagavad Gita, Tantric texts, and others.

Consider heart attacks. Even as recently as the 1950s, we had little idea of how to prevent or treat them. We didn’t know, for example, about the danger of high blood pressure, and had we been aware of it we wouldn’t have known what to do about it. The first safe medication to treat hypertension was not developed and conclusively demonstrated to prevent disease until the 1960s. We didn’t know about the role of cholesterol, either, or genetics or smoking or diabetes. Furthermore,

The simplest truth is that we’re all killing ourselves with our temperament. A person will tend toward being bossy, or high-strung, or depressed, or listless. And this has predictable physical consequences. If we don’t learn to become aware of our moods and take steps to moderate them, we’ll eventually die from our habits. This is where heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and autoimmune problems come from.

Be aware, though, that once you’ve been diabetic, the tendency to become diabetic again remains if you regain weight or go back to unhealthy eating. This is a new diet style and lifestyle forever. You

Perhaps the most significant thing to be aware of here, for anyone who works a desk job, is that sitting is an independent health risk factor—meaning that even if you do exercise, sitting for eight hours each day will still damage your health.124 According to Thomas Yates, MD, “Even for people who are otherwise active, sitting for long stretches seems to be an independent risk factor for conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and kidney disease.”125